Xi ally named Shanghai party boss
BEIJING: Li Qiang, an ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping, has been named the top Communist Party official in Shanghai, replacing Han Zheng who last week joined the elite Politburo Standing Committee, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday.
Xi on Wednesday unveiled a new senior leadership at the end of the twice-a-decade congress, with new members appointed to the three elite party bodies that run China.
Over the next few weeks and months, a series of other reshuffles will take place as the party moves people into new party and government positions and as others retire.
Xinhua said in a brief notice that Li, 58, would take up the party secretary post in Shanghai and no longer serve in the top spot in Jiangsu province, according to a “decision of the Central Committee”, which at 204 members is the largest of the party’s ruling bodies.
The move puts Xi allies in China’s four major municipalities Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing - power centres on par administratively to provinces.
A native of the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, Li was secretary general of the provincial party committee under Xi when the latter was Zhejiang party boss from 2002 to 2007.
Li was appointed to the 25member Politburo, which is under the Standing Committee, on Wednesday, and Reuters’ sources had tipped him to take on the Shanghai job. — Reuters